Using Modern Technology...

The link above takes you to a slide show put together by the The ChesterBelloc Mandate Distributist Blog. Good job, guys.

The Perfect Child

Did you catch James G. "Gerry" Bruen Jr.'s story "The Perfect Child" in the latest Gilbert?

Ha, I wondered if it would end that way. The same way I've wondered how two beautifully in love deaf parents feel about having a "hearing" child, and how difficult that is for them, and yet...how wonderful, too.

A thoughtful story.

The Return of the Angels

There is a reprint of an article in the latest Gilbert magazine which hasn't been seen for 104 years, from the Daily News, March 14, 1903. Unless you happen to have an old copy of the Daily News, of course.

I loved it, and thought what an amazing time it must have been to be able to read Gilbert regularly in print, writing stuff like this 104 years ago! Such logic and clear thinking! It explains his whole conversion to the faith, even though he wouldn't officially convert until 1922. Still, this shows his acceptance of Christianity as true in 1903. He also discusses the faith of religion and the faith of scientism, evolution, rationalism and reason. You could have a whole High school level course just on this one essay.

And that's one of the things I love about Chesterton. If you haven't yet, hurry and get your membership with subscription (ask to start with June/July 2007 so you can read this Daily News article, worth the price in my mind) before the rates go up, which, I warn you as one who knows, it is going to soon.

Martin Responds

Martin Cothran responds to John Peterson's article on Chesterton the Answer Man.

Are You A Fan of GKC?

I hadn't really considered myself a "fan" of Chesterton's, since he's dead, the term didn't seem to apply in my mind. However, Chris Chan's essay in the current issue of Gilbert Magazine has me thinking I am. If there weren't this group, this "fandom" of Chesterton's, I think he would be quite obscure today.

So, are you a fan?

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

A Resounding Thwack with a Wooden Stick

There has been a lot of discussion recently about wands and wizards, about fairy tales and magic, about Chesterton and Harry Potter, about the uses of magic and fantasy and fiction.

Despite a very strong urge to delve into this topic, and a wish to write or at least to read a "Little Summa on the Story", some years ago my mother told me that I have other things to do. So I must proceed to do them.

But without violating my mother's directives, I want to help you, my dear cousins, to have a greater understanding of our dear Uncle Gilbert, and in my writing today I shall touch on a very strange and little-known piece of fantasy fiction which he delighted in.

It does serve as input to the larger discussion on fantasy, for after I read the book I shall consider today, I wondered whether it may have provided the source of the fist-fight of Ransom with the demonic being in Lewis's Perelandra

But that is not the mystery I refer to. Click here to discover more about magic.
I mean, simply, the mystery of Punch and Judy.

Punch? Whozzat?

Punch is a wooden hand puppet with a big nose, who appears in a popular street theater show - he does very little more than beat his wife, beat his baby, beat his dog, beat a physician, beat the policeman, beat the judge, beat the jailer, and beat the devil.

There are over 100 mentions of the name "Punch" in GKC's works, though a fair number of these refer to the famous magazine, and not to the famous street puppet. Like a number of other terms in GKC, "Punch" is something one feels one might understand - until one tries to explain what it is. It is a kind of miniature theater with hand-puppets, a form of street entertainment, which presented the same little show again and again, to cheers and delight of both children and adults. I am not going to give the complete details here - that is why I ordered the book! Nor am I going to try to explain it, or explain it away.

[Note: if you have ever seen the musical "Scrooge", there is a scene where Scrroge demands payment from a P&J puppetmaster... the ONLY time I am aware of ever having actually seen it!]

But "Punch" was something which GKC often took as a "given" - something known, as fundamental a reference to his readers as phrases like "Beam me up Scotty" or "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" and such are to us today. We "know" Dorothy Gale and Darth Vader; GKC "knew" Punch:

Dickens was a mythologist rather than a novelist; he was the last of the mythologists, and perhaps the greatest. He did not always manage to make his characters men, but he always managed, at the least, to make them gods. They are creatures like Punch or Father Christmas. They live statically, in a perpetual summer of being themselves.
[GKC Charles Dickens CW15:87-8]

Or consider this curious commentary on America:

America is a serious parody. America is an exaggeration not more comic, but more solemn, than its original. We are all acquainted with the ordinary notion of a caricature, in which certain features are treated more largely, but more lightly. Thus, let us say, a King is given an outrageously large crown, and he becomes a pantomime King. But we must try and imagine the reversal of this process: we must conceive, not something heavy taken lightly, but something originally light taken heavily and hugely. It is not that the King becomes a comic character by the enlargement of his crown; it is actually that Punch becomes a serious character by the further elongation of his nose. Ordinary people treat their institutions as jokes. American people treat jokes as institutions. Englishmen make a picture absurd by expanding it into a hoarding. America makes a sketch eternal by expanding it into a fresco.
[GKC, ILN Aug 15 1908 CW28:159]

(Oooh, an "English" term to examine! A "hoarding" is a fence of boards around a building used during erection or repairs, often used for posting bills; hence a billboard-like poster.)

I mentioned our infernal Enemy as being a main character in the saga of Punch and Judy. You may wonder why this is so - and wonder where P&J fits into the larger discussion of fantasy and fiction... but as you may expect, Chesterton already has an explanation:

Nothing so stamps the soul of Christendom as the strange subconscious gaiety which can make farces out of tragedies, which can turn instruments of torture into toys. So in the Catholic dramas the Devil was always the comic character; so in the great Protestant drama of Punch and Judy, the gallows and the coffin are the last and best of the jokes.
[GKC "The Fading Fireworks" in Alarms and Discursions]

I have no space to elaborate on this; there are numerous cross-references to be made here - OK, just two: he calls attention to the fact that the representations of Christian martyrs usually contain tokens of their torture... It is summarised in GKC's powerful epigram "The Cross cannot be defeated, for it is Defeat." [The Ball and the Cross] The other is the second-most-famous of all GKC quotes, to wit: "Satan fell by force of gravity." [Orthodoxy CW1:326]

But, as GKC liked to say how much more is the deeper mystery of these puppets which are made of wood! We hear the ancient chant from Good Friday:

Ecce lignum Crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit.

That is:

Behold, the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world.

Remember that mundus = "world" is the usual translation for the Greek KOSMOS. We hear this same thought expressed even more powerfully in the Preface for the Holy Cross: "The Tree of Man's defeat has become his Tree of Victory!"

But we are speaking of Punch - or, I should say, GKC is:

I did like the toy theatre even when I knew it was a toy theatre. I did like the cardboard figures, even when I found they were of cardboard. The white light of wonder that shone on the whole business was not any sort of trick; indeed the things that now shine most in my memory were many of them mere technical accessories; such as the parallel sticks of white wood that held the scenery in place; a white wood that is still strangely mixed in my imaginative instincts with all the holy trade of the Carpenter. It was the same with any number of other games or pretences in which I took delight; as in the puppet-show of Punch and Judy. I not only knew that the figures were made of wood, but I wanted them to be made of wood. I could not imagine such a resounding thwack being given except by a wooden stick on a wooden head. But I took the sort of pleasure that a primitive man might have taken in a primitive craft, in seeing that they were carved and painted into a startling and grimacing caricature of humanity. I was pleased that the piece of wood was a face; but I was also pleased that the face was a piece of wood. That did not mean that the drama of wood, like the other drama of cardboard, did not reveal to me real ideas and imaginations, and give me glorious glimpses into the possibilities of existence.
[GKC Autobiography CW16:54-55]

For more on this wonderful English icon which so delighted our Uncle Chesterton, see Punch and Judy: A Short History with the Original Dialogue available from Dover Publications.

Editorial

This Gilbert is the Summer Movie Edition. The editorial is about "The Trouble with Hollywood" and mentions three movies, Sunrise, The Crowd and Street Angel as among the greatest films ever made.

I've never heard of any of them, nor seen them. Anyone else? I may have to take a trip to Blockbuster.

My new Gilbert arrived!

Prepare to discuss tomorrow.

St. Louis gets a blog of its own

Check it out here. Congratulations, St. Louis!

Back home...

And one thing I noticed while traveling: there is a real need for Chesterton out there. So we've got to keep on leading people to read his work, so that they--and we-- learn (or continue to learn) how to think.

So many of today's arguments aren't really arguments. They aren't reasoned responses to actual differences, they are opinions thrown left and right and no one listening to anybody else because they don't agree. And if one side can't "win" then frustration abounds.

An argument doesn't always mean that we'll get someone to come around to our point of view. An argument, first of all, is listening to what the other person has to say. Secondly, thinking about what that person has to say. Then responding to that person in a calm and peaceful way. "I understand that you are saying this....but have you ever thought about that?"

So many of today's arguments are just "You can't possibly be sane! Anyone who thinks that is crazy! This is the only way that anybody should think about x!" and reasonableness, we can see, is not employed.

Pardon my lack of presence here

I'm on the road at an art fair. The art fair hours are 9 to 9 each day. We had a tornado yesterday. (Everyone is ok and the art survived without damage.) I am doing 2-4 interviews a day, mostly on radio concerning my new book. Even now I await Portland Oregon to call and have me on the Victoria Taft show at 10:35pm my time (which is a balmy 7:35 their time, those lucky ducks!) and tomorrow am I will be on tv again, this time in Detroit at 9:15 EST on NBC (Local News 4).

May I please remind you to be kind on this blog while I'm away. Thank you.

Chesterton: The Answer Man

Can Chesterton answer all our questions? John sent me this previously published article in response to the combox writer in a previous argument down below.

“Chesterton as ‘The Answer Man’”
A Paper Prepared for the Chicago Chesterton Society in 1987 as reprinted in Midwest Chesterton News, December 10, 1990
John Peterson

Chesterton said more than once that he could start with any seemingly insignificant or random point and build his entire philosophy from that beginning. He says it quite clearly, for example, in his Illustrated London News column of February 17, 1906:

“A Philosophical connection there always is between any two items imaginable. This must be so, so long as we allow any harmony or unity in the cosmos at all. There must be a philosophical connection between any two things in the universe. If it is not so, we can only say there is no universe, and can be no philosophy.” [See CW, XXVII, p. 127]Continue reading.

He said this often, and he demonstrated it more often. You will think especially of his essay, “What I Found in My Pocket,” which Chesterton wrote for the London Daily News in that same year of 1906. It was later collected in the 1909 volume titled Tremendous Trifles. The essay describes how, on a long railway journey somewhere, he found ultimate lessons in a tram ticket, a box of matches, a piece of chalk, a pocketknife, and anything at all among the random litter as he searched through his pockets.

Some might say the whole meaning and charm of Tremendous Trifles is this Chestertonian ability to see the eternal in the trivial. You might as easily say it is the whole meaning and charm of all his journalism, his newspaper work—the Illustrated London News essays included. Why else would we meet here in Chicago Illinois in 1987 to discuss newspaper columns from London England of 1906? Why are we interested in Chesterton’s reaction to a series of childish pranks that occurred over eighty years ago in time, in a foreign country over four thousand miles away in geography?

I realize this is a fairly well worn path in Chesterton discussions and criticism. We all know that Chesterton finds eternal significance in cheese; or, to use the essay under discussion here, eternal significance in undergraduate mischief and student disturbances. But having said that, we have to ask one more question. Does Chesterton teach us the meaning of cheese or beer or student ragging and rioting? Or does he teach us how to see cheese and these other things in order that we ourselves may be able to find meaning in them? Does he give us meanings or does he show the way to find meanings?

Put another way, the question asks about using Chesterton’s Collected Works as a kind of dictionary or encyclopedia. What are we to think of beer? Look it up in Chesterton. What are we to think of student mischief? What are we to think of Charles Dickens? Or The Book of Job? Or Christianity? One can use Chesterton as a source of doctrine, and doubtless many do. But it is also possible to suggest that Chesterton’s lessons in how to think are more valuable than his lessons in what to think. His essay on “Undergraduate Ragging” offers us a chance to make and to study this distinction.

In this essay, Chesterton does not offer us a single point of view on student outbreaks and mischief. He offers us lessons in how to use student outbreaks in various ways to illustrate moral lessons—moral lessons of more than one kind. How are we to judge the students? On page 612 we are told that the moral test of student mischief rests on the answers to two questions. (One) are their victims also their friends? (Two) are their victims strong enough to defend themselves and to retaliate? If the answers are “no,” Chesterton says student ragging is mere cowardice.

My point is that after reading the essay we are much better informed about how Chesterton thought about these kinds of events but not so well informed about what he thought about them. The “what,” he leads us to understand, is not the issue.

Next, we have the medical students who attacked the “celebrated anti-vivisectionist monument” near Chesterton’s home in Battersea. On page 614 we find that “because the medical students were acting from philosophical or fanatical motives,” their case is “more interesting and valuable.” This leads Chesterton into an intriguing discussion of vivisection with which the column concludes.

Meanwhile, back on page 332 [the column of 11/24/06] we remember having heard of “the English schoolboy Allen who was arrested for having painted red” yet a different public monument—this time the statue of a Swiss general. About this student uprising, Chesterton says,

“The morals of a matter like this are exactly like the morals of anything else; they are concerned with mutual contract, or the rights of independent human lives. I have no right to paint the statue of Lord Salisbury red, just as I have no right to paint the face of Mr. Moberly Bell green, however much I think they might be improved by the transformation.”

This general statement of moral principle might have been applied to the medical students who attacked the anti-vivisectionist monument. Or it might have been applied to the undergraduate bullies who attacked the defenseless old maiden ladies.

Also, turning the discussion around the other way, the rules for student ragging which Chesterton formulated on page 613 might have been applied to the case of Master Allen who painted the Swiss general on page 332. It is evident, however, that Chesterton was not aiming at a universal “law of unruly students.”

We all probably fall into the habit of using Chesterton as an encyclopedia—asking for the great man to supply us with definitive answers to highly specific questions. The problem is, on any narrow question, Chesterton was likely to have had an assortment of opinions, the one to be used depending upon the controversy of the moment, the surrounding symbolism, or the weaponry to be found in the enemy camp.

We make Chesterton “The Answer Man” when we paraphrase him, or quote him in an inappropriate contexts, or otherwise use his authority when speaking on behalf of our own pet ideas. One suspects that the one-volume Quotable Chesterton is misused in this way: want to know what Chesterton thought about advertising or Zionism. Look it up, it’s in alphabetical order.

Scholars conduct serious arguments in the pages of The Chesterton Review over whether Chesterton would or would not have voted for Ronald Reagan.

Critics publish long volumes of summarization, as, for example, Chistopher Hollis’ The Mind of Chesterton, in which the author’s only evident purpose is to paraphrase Chesterton’s published books, boil the ideas down, and “explain” what he wrote, in the fashion of Cliff’s Notes.

When Chesterton said he could connect any two ideas in the universe, he might have had in mind the meanings of all the world’s separate, distinct, and individual things. He also might have had in mind the pathways between things, the secret but real ties which, he was confident, he could always discern connecting A to Z, soup to nuts, and undergraduate riots to the morality of vivisection.

Chesterton’s grandnephew, David Chesterton, wrote in 1982 that his uncle convinced him to be busy about searching for conclusions rather than forming conclusions. [See The Chesterton Review, February, 1982, pp. 51-56]

We know that David Chesterton went to the other extreme: he was an ideologue. More moderately though, a case can be made that Chesterton should be read less for the final word on passing events such as student riots, and more for fresh ways of thinking about student riots, or about any of the countless, random, passing news items that have colored daily journalism from Chesterton’s day to our own.

An atheist responds

Gerry Bruen sent me this response (written by someone else--Gerry just let me know about it) to a previous article in the Washington Post. He repsonds to the quote from Chesterton about Thor. Interesting reading.

A Powerful Tribute to Cheese--A Long-Awaited Poem

The intrepid poet at ChesterCon07 was Rob MacArthur. His poem: Ballade Against Cheesemongery. It shall appear in the next issue of Gilbert Magazine; but for those three of us who still read this blog, I present to you: Rob MacArthur.

Ballade Against Cheesemongery.

The grocer’s, for $6.95 per pound
Havarti sells, in blocks of creamy beige
Bespeckled with unthinkables (well ground
Or crushed) like nuts, or wine, or sage
And rosemary. At this I briefly rage
Then pass it o’er for cheap varieties
My unsophistic hungers to assuage.
I do desire no vanity in cheese.

I go, and madness does not fall behind:
In tubs on frigid shelves they sell a paste
Suffused with cherries, or with garlic rind,
Or bacon. And withal there goes to waste
The sweetest cream that e’er Galthea placed
Between pastoral palms of devotees
In Arcady, whose name is here disgraced,
And who desired no vanity in cheese.

And lo! What woe behold I though I rail
Against whatever fiend devised this thing
Called Pepperjack, to make the righteous quail
With wax to mock and capsicum to sting!
My muse leaves me. I can no longer sing
Upon this sacrilege! (The poet flees.
He snatches Mozzeralla on the wing,
For he desires no vanity in cheese.)

Prince, you offer pepper-corned Edam
With citron-oil essence. Remove it please:
Its power my gut to sour, your soul to damn!
I do desire no vanity in cheese.

News has it that this young poet has many more such wonderful poems up his sleeve, and future issues of Gilbert Magazine will carry his work. If you don't have a subscription, it would appear as if now would be the moment to secure such future poetry.

Chesterton in the News

At the end of this article on pacifism, HT David Zach.

And also, at the beginning of this article.

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

Another excellent post from Dr. Thursday, thanks so much for his Thursday work here.

Vice Squad

I am busy at present, and was unable to formulate an interesting commentary on another book in our serious of "Books GKC Read" which are available from Dover Publications. Don't worry there are plenty more to consider. But for today, since I have just seen an interesting post linking to a Chesterton quote about cigars, I thought you might enjoy this fragment of GKC, and also the story behind the story...

--Dr. Thursday

...numberless Americans smoke numberless cigars. But there does exist an extraordinary idea that ethics are involved in some way, and many who smoke really disapprove of smoking. I remember once receiving two American interviewers on the same afternoon; there was a box of cigars in front of me, and I offered one to each in turn. Their reaction (as they would probably call it) was very curious to watch. The first journalist stiffened suddenly and silently, and declined in a very cold voice. He could not have conveyed more plainly that I had attempted to corrupt an honourable man with a foul and infamous indulgence, as if I were the Old Man of the Mountain offering him the hashish that would turn him into an assassin. The second reaction was even more remarkable. The second journalist first looked doubtful; then looked sly; then seemed to glance about him nervously, as if wondering whether we were alone; and then said, with a sort of crestfallen and covert smile: "Well, Mr. Chesterton, I'm afraid I have the habit."

As I also have the habit, and have never been able to imagine how it could be connected with morality or immorality, I confess that I plunged with him deeply into an immoral life. In the course of our conversation I found he was otherwise perfectly sane, he was quite intelligent about economics or architecture, but his moral sense seemed to have entirely disappeared. He really thought it was rather wicked to smoke. He had no "standard of abstract right and wrong": in him it was not merely moribund, it was apparently dead.

The culture that is concerned here derives indirectly rather from New England than from Old America. It really does not seem to understand what is meant by a standard of right and wrong. It has a vague sentimental notion that certain habits were not suitable to the old log-cabin or the old home-town. It has a vague utilitarian notion that certain habits are not directly useful in the new amalgamated stores or the new financial gambling-hell. A man does not chop wood for the log-hut by smoking; and a man does not make dividends for the Big Boss by smoking; and therefore a smoke has a smell as of something sinful. Of what the great theologians and moral philosophers have meant by a sin, these people have no more idea than a child drinking milk has of a great toxicologist analysing poisons. It may be to the credit of their virtue to be thus vague about vice. The man who is silly enough to say, when offered a cigarette: "I have no vices," may not always deserve the rapier-thrust of the reply given by the Italian Cardinal: "It is not a vice, or doubtless you would have it." But at least a Cardinal knows it is not a vice; which assists the clarity of his mind. But the lack of clear standards among those who vaguely think of it as a vice may yet be the beginning of much peril and oppression.

[GKC ILN Feb 5 1927, CW34:250-252]

Now: Who is this Cardinal? Ah...

In The Master Diplomat subtitled "from the life of Leo XIII" by Rev. Robert Quardt (Alba House, 1964), page 105, is this:

For a time an artist was working in the Vatican who was an accomplished painter, but otherwise a rather irresponsible fellow. Leo knew this, but while he was watching the man at work one day, he became so enthused over hes capability that he wanted to reward him. This was done by offering him a sniff of snuff, which however, was declined by the artist with the very rude remark: "Holy Father, I really am not a victim of this vice." To this gauche remark Leo instantaneously retorted: "If this were a vice, you would have had it a long time ago."

Max and Gilbert

Denny has a wonderful post up about Max Beerbohm and GK Chesterton. The part that made a tiger of jealousy rise within me, though, was where Denny says he was "perusing the G.K. Chesterton folders in the British Museum a couple of years ago". This is a secret wish of mine, and Denny's already done it! Lucky guy. Go read his post, it's wonderful.

GKC Quoted at Opinion Journal

And of course, it's that quote again.

H/T David Zach. Thanks.

The Glow of the Conference

Well, the glow of the conference is wearing off for me, how about you? I was thinking, "What one thing did I take from the Chesterton conference this year?"

I think it is this: there are many roads which lead to Chesterton, and it is fascinating to hear about the different journeys.

I asked Dale if I could tell my tale at the banquet, and he said No, the banquet was supposed to be fun, silly, jokes and such, and my tale was a nightmare. But perhaps someday, you'll hear it and not think so. I think it is very funny.

So, what one thing did you take from the Chesterton Conference?

Does anyone besides me want to call the Chesterton Conference in 08 "ChesterFest"?

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

An American Poet

Over 200 times GKC invokes the name of Walt Whitman - in books from NNH to STA, from Browning to Chaucer, from Heretics to The Thing. An entire essay (ILN June 13, 1925, CW33:569) was about him, and it appears in Maisie Ward's biography of GKC over two dozen times, calling the discovery of his poems a "powerful influence in the direction of mental health" for the young GKC: "I shall never forget," Lucian Oldershaw writes, "reading to him ... in my bedroom at West Kensington. The seance lasted from two to three hours, and we were intoxicated with the excitement of the discovery." [Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 50]
Click here to discover more about Whitman.We who delighted in the thrills of ChesterCon 2007 saw how it provides a foretaste, a vague hint, of what GKC calls the "Inn at the End of the World" (in Dickens CW15:209 and NNH CW6:371) and which the Bible reveals in somewhat greater detail. Among our many researches, we must consider how Chesterton saw this in Whitman's works:

The whole point of Walt Whitman, right or wrong, is that the great heart of man should be an inn with a hundred doors standing open. It is that there should be a sort of everlasting bonfire of special rejoicing and festivity for all men that come and all things that happen; that nothing should be thought too trivial or too dull to be accepted by that gigantic hospitality of the heart. [GKC ILN June 13 1925 CW33:572]

Perhaps even more important for us is how Whitman played a role in GKC's philosophical and spiritual development. GKC gave us some insight into this difficult and personal matter:

I hung on to the remains of religion by one thin thread of thanks. I thanked whatever gods might be, not like Swinburne, because no life lived for ever, but because any life lived at all; not, like Henley for my unconquerable soul (for I have never been so optimistic about my own soul as all that) but for my own soul and my own body, even if they could be conquered. This way of looking at things, with a sort of mystical minimum of gratitude, was of course, to some extent assisted by those few of the fashionable writers who were not pessimists; especially by Walt Whitman, by Browning and by Stevenson; Browning's "God must be glad one loves his world so much", or Stevenson's "belief in the ultimate decency of things". But I do not think it is too much to say that I took it in a way of my own; even if it was a way I could not see clearly or make very clear.
[GKC, Autobiography CW16:97, emphasis added]

This phrase "one thin thread of thanks" is one of the most important of the great Chestertonian motifs. It may be that GKC has added to the famous "five proofs" for the existence of God by giving us "the argument from thanksgiving"... certainly it is worth investigation. And just as Aquinas accumulated references, both in support and in attack of each of his questions, so too we shall have to lok at Whitman if we want to understand more about the Chestertonian motif of thanskgiving. Perhaps someone from the "American Whitman Society" (if such exists) might give us some insight into this poem by GKC, which somehow summarizes this entire point:

"Eternities"

I cannot count the pebbles in the brook.
Well hath He spoken: 'Swear not by thy head,
Thou knowest not the hairs,' though He, we read,
Writes that wild number in His own strange book.

I cannot count the sands or search the seas,
Death cometh, and I leave so much untrod.
Grant my immortal aureole, O my God,
And I will name the leaves upon the trees.

In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass,
Still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
Or see the fading of the fires of hell
Ere I have thanked my God for all the grass.
[GKC, CW10:209]

I almost forgot! If you want to read some Whitman, you might check out Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition available from Dover Publications.